There is conventionally proposed an in-vehicle program update apparatus, which is mounted on a vehicle and performs wireless communication with an outside center apparatus, thereby receiving an update file to update a program from the center apparatus, and automatically updating the program corresponding to the update file.
For example, such an apparatus eliminates the need for a user to visit a facility (e.g., a dealer or a maintenance factory) where a special tool to rewrite a program is available, the need to provide such a facility with a special tool or technical personnel, or the need for the technical personnel to visit users. This enables to expect to improve the user's convenience or reduce facility costs.
Supposing that a user may update a program after the user gets out of the vehicle, there is proposed a program update system that transmits the following from the vehicle to a center apparatus when updating the program: various vehicle states (e.g., door opening/closing and light turning on/off) and monitoring information that represents video captured by an in-vehicle camera.
According to such a system, an operator to control the center apparatus may notify the user of a suspicious person when detected based on the monitoring information transmitted from the vehicle. When an unlocked door is detected, the center apparatus may transmit a control instruction to lock the door to the vehicle. This enables to expect to diminish the risk of theft (e.g., see Patent Literature 1).
The program update system described in Patent Literature 1 transmits the monitoring information from the vehicle to the center apparatus. The monitoring information represents the light on/off state and the wiper operation state as vehicles states. Based on the monitoring information, an operator transmits a control instruction to save the battery to the vehicle. Specifically, the control instruction turns off a light or stops the wiper operation.